Yesterday afternoon, more than 140 units of horses, mules, donkeys, wagons and marching bands moved down North Sandusky Street the same way they have for years, stepping off from the Delaware County Fairgrounds main gate at 3 p.m. and looping through downtown before returning through the Euclid Avenue gate. The route hasn't changed. What's lining it has.
Anyone standing on North Sandusky Street to watch the All Horse Parade this year was standing a few doors down from a restaurant that didn't exist twelve months ago. That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. It's a sign of what's actually happening in downtown Delaware right now, and it changes how the next two weeks of the town's calendar should be read.
The Route Hasn't Moved. The Storefronts Have.
The parade path is fixed by tradition and geography: out from the fairgrounds onto Pennsylvania Avenue, then a loop through North Sandusky Street, West Winter Street, North Liberty Street, Lincoln Avenue and Euclid Avenue before re-entering the grounds. Families have watched from the same curbs for years. What sits behind those curbs is where the story gets interesting.
Son of Thurman opened at 5 N. Sandusky St., putting a fourth-generation Columbus burger name directly on the parade route. The family has run Thurman Cafe locations since 1942, and the Delaware storefront brings the Thurman Burger and the Thurmanator to a street that spends one Sunday a year packed with spectators watching horses go by. Anyone who came downtown for the parade this year walked past it whether they planned to or not.
That's the shift worth naming. The parade used to be the whole event. Now it's the opening scene in a stretch of downtown that has quietly filled in with places to eat, which means the same walk that used to end when the last band passed now has a reason to continue.
Two More Kitchens Off the Parade Line
A few blocks off the exact parade path, the pattern holds. Ohana Island Grill & Bar opened on West William Street, a small, family-run Hawaiian BBQ spot serving chicken katsu, kalua pork and musubi alongside handcrafted tiki cocktails. It's the kind of addition that doesn't show up in a chain-restaurant roundup because it isn't one, and it's easy to miss unless you already know William Street has become a place worth a slower walk.
Luna Pizza Kitchen has a Delaware location planned for 66 Hyatts Road, expanding a Central Ohio wood-fired pizza concept that's been building a footprint across the region. It's not downtown proper, but it's part of the same story: Delaware's restaurant map has more names on it this September than it did last September, and most of them clustered close enough together that a single walk downtown covers several of them.
Here's what's actually new and roughly where it sits relative to the parade route and fairgrounds:
- Son of Thurman, 5 N. Sandusky St. — directly on the parade loop
- Ohana Island Grill & Bar, West William Street — a few blocks off Sandusky
- Luna Pizza Kitchen, 66 Hyatts Road — planned location, broader Delaware footprint
None of these are speculative. They're either open now or confirmed by name and address, which matters because a lot of what gets written about a small city's food scene is aspirational. This isn't.
Restaurant Week Is Still Running When the Fair Gates Open
Delaware African Restaurant Week runs September 10 through September 20, which means it overlaps directly with the opening days of the Delaware County Fair on September 19. Participating restaurants are offering discounted menus through the 20th, and anyone who hasn't made it out yet still has a few days before the promotion ends and before fair week fully takes over downtown's attention.
That overlap is worth noticing on its own terms. Most towns treat a restaurant promotion and a county fair as separate events on separate calendars. In Delaware this September, they're happening in the same seven-day window, which means the food story and the fair story are the same story if you're paying attention to dates instead of headlines.
The Fair Week That Swallows the Town
The Delaware County Fair runs September 19 through 26 at the fairgrounds on Pennsylvania Avenue, and it brings the kind of crowd that reshapes downtown traffic and parking patterns for the better part of a week. The centerpiece is the Little Brown Jug on Thursday, September 24, the 81st running of what's widely regarded as the premier three-year-old pacing race in North America. Live racing at the fairgrounds actually starts September 16, building toward Jug Day, and fair admission is included with a Jug ticket. There's a $5 per-vehicle parking charge at the fairgrounds specifically on Thursday, which is worth knowing before you drive in expecting free parking on the biggest day of the week.
For a resident, the practical takeaway isn't just "the fair is coming." It's that the same week the fairgrounds fill up with harness racing fans, the restaurants a few blocks away are still riding the tail end of a discount promotion, and the sidewalks that hosted horses on Sunday are about to host a much bigger crowd headed to Pennsylvania Avenue. Downtown Delaware in the back half of September isn't one event. It's three or four overlapping ones, and they're close enough together geographically that a single evening downtown can touch all of them.
What This Adds Up To
Take the pieces individually and they read like separate line items on a community calendar: a parade, a fair, a race, a restaurant promotion. Put them together and they describe something different. Downtown Delaware has enough new restaurants now that its biggest traditional event, a horse parade that's been part of the town's identity for generations, has picked up a second function it didn't have a few years ago. It's become a walking preview of where to eat during fair week.
That's not a small thing for people who already live here. It means the next two weeks aren't just about watching horses or picking a day to go to the fairgrounds. They're a window where the oldest tradition on the calendar and the newest storefronts on Sandusky and William Streets are operating on the same block, at the same time, for anyone willing to walk a few extra minutes past the parade route.
If you're already living in downtown Delaware, none of this requires a plan. It just requires paying attention to what's actually new this year instead of assuming the town looks the same as it did last September. For a closer look at what makes this part of Delaware County worth watching, Connie Sadowski covers the neighborhood in more depth on her Delaware, Ohio neighborhood guide, and if you're weighing a move to one of the historic homes near this stretch of downtown, her guide to buying an older or historic home in Delaware walks through what to expect. When you're ready to talk about what's happening in the local market, reach out for a free home valuation and start the conversation.
